Manufacture of closure device for bottles, jars, and the like



Dec. 5, 1933. w. A. STEPHENS 1,938,503

MANUFACTURE OF CLOSURE DEVICE FOR BOTTLES, JARS, AND THE LIKE Original Filed May 28, 1930 UCQ fm/kntaz s W14. STEPHENS Patented Dec. 5, 1933 UNITED STATES MANUFACTURE or CLOSURE DEVICE Foa BOTTLES, .mns, AND THE LIKE William Alfred Stephens, London, England Original application May 28, 1930, Serial No. 456,612, and in Great Britain July 13, 1929. Divided and this application May 16, 1932.

Serial No. 611,673.

2 Claims.

This invention relates to the manufacture of.

closure devices for bottles, jars or the like, being a division from application Ser. No. 456,612 filed 28th May, 1930.

It is usual practice to utilize as a closure for a bottle, jar or the like a Phoenix closure, 1. e. a closure sold under the registered trade-mark Phoenix, and including a cap (termed in the trade an inner) which is lodged within a flanged jointed locking ring (termed in the trade a band) the flange engaging over the periphery of the cap. Such closures are sold to firms where bottling and preserving are practised and each closure is secured to a filled container by the free edge or thedepending edge of the ring being spun or pressed in under a shoulder on the container, the ring then being of channel form. The rings so used have at one end a slot and near the other end a tongue, and these are engaged under pressure to make the jointed ring an endless member.

Such a locking ring is usually fractured on removal, and accordingly is considered non-replaceable.

In the manufacture of a non-replaceable locking ring, a strip blank is stamped out of strip ma- .terial, the slot at the one end, hereafter termed the tail, being cut transversely of the strip and the tongue out longitudinally at the other end, hereafter referred to as the head. These opera- .tions are efiected with machine tools termed a band die and in such machine it has been proposed to form the punch so that in cutting the tongue it also lifts it slightly from the band to facilitate the linking operation hereafter described. However, generally speaking, the tongue is merely cut and left in the plane of the strip.

As the present invention has particular reference to the manufacture of Phoenix closures, the usual manual operations necessary to produce them will now be described.

The stamped strip is first curled, then the tongue is pried up and lifted slightly from the plane of the strip and the ends linked by a sort of sliding, scraping action, the slot at the tail end being threaded over the tongue.

Very often, as a result of speeding up linking, the strip. is bent into a flat elliptical form by the efiorts of the operator to quickly place the slot at the free end of the tongue and pull it under the tongue, and whether or not the slot is actually pulled to the root of the tongue will depend on the efliciency' of the effort of the operator. The tongue, which is then overlying the tail of the ring, is hammered down, thereby locking the linked ends of the strip and forming the ring.

Each of these operations is usually effected by different operators. It is then required to associate with the jointed ring a cap which is to be used with the ring. Each cap is placed by an operator by hand within a jointed ring (usually distorted as a result of curling), and generally the cap is disposed about down from one edge of thering.

In actual practice here again considerable differences in result are obtained, first of all by reason of the difference of the depth of disposal of the cap within the ring; and secondly with regard to the parallelism of the cap to a plane containing an edge of the ring.

The next operation consists in putting the cap with its associated ring in a machine termed a dial feed press which centralizes the cap in the ring and turns over the upstanding edge of the ring, thereby forming a flange over the cap of about deep, that is corresponding to the depth of the displacement of the cap within the ring. In this form the cap and ring are sent to the place where they will be used on containers, and machines such as described in U. S. Patent No. 1,452,410 may be utilized for fixing such caps 86 with their rings on the containers by turning in the lower edge of the ring under the neck of the container. a I E In U. S. Patent No. 1,725,602 is described and claimed a method of jointing non-replaceable looking rings whereby the several hand operations referred to are expedited and more accurately effected, and there is described in this specification and in U. S. Patent No. 1,725,601 apparatus whereby the association of bands and inners may be 90 automaticallyefiected as a continuous automatic operation. 7 V

Now the main object of the present invention is to provide an improved means for expediting and more accurately carrying out the several is formed at the end of the head for threading through the slot in the act of curling the band, the tongue being bendable back on to the tail of the band so as to frictionally lock together the curled ends when pressed together.

-By employing a band with a terminal tongue in contradistinction to a band having a tongue stamped out of the body of the band, the operation of jointing the ends of the band to form a locking ring is greatly facilitated as the operator has merely to bring the ends together to cause the tongue to enter the slot in the tail end of the band. It is not necessary to overlap the ends of the body of the band as in present practice.

The tongue is merely passed through the slot in the act of curling, and bent over the tail. This act of locking the ends will, it will be observed, involve but one bending movement of the tongue; heretofore the tongue was first raised and then bent back, but in this form of construction it is merely bent back once.

In a modified form of band according to the invention a tamper-proof locking ring is produced comprising a tongue in the tail adapted to engage the tongue in the head after a locking operation. The slot for the tongue in the head may be constituted bythe gap left by forming the tongue in the tail and the tongue in the tail may be left so as to effect a camming action on the tongue in the head, thereby facilitating thread- A locking ring according to the present invention may be notched or perforated to form a shoulder whereby the ring can be curled on a cylindrical former including a finger extending from the periphery thereof. To this end the head may be notched or perforated or the tongue in the head provided with a shoulder.

By such a construction the usual hand operations are greatly expedited, whilst owing to the disposal of the tongue more accurate results obtain as regards conformity of product.

In order that the invention may be more clearly understood, reference will now be made to the accompanying drawing which shows by way of example some embodiment of the present invention.

In the drawing:

Figure 1 shows a preferred form of band constructed according to the invention; and

Figures 2 to 7- show modified forms of band hereafter more particularly referred to.

In the drawing like reference numerals design'ate the same or similar parts.

Referring first to Figures 1 to 7 of the accompanying drawing, the band 1 comprises at one end a tail 2 in which a slot 3 is formed, which is preferably slightly wider than the slot in the ordinary Phoenix band, and at the other end in the head 4 a terminal tongue 5. The band is formed from a standard blank as used in making Phoenix closures, the terminal tongue being formed by stamping out the corners 6 of the body of the band, thereby leaving the tongue 5 outstanding from the end of the band. i

In all constructions according to the present invention the tongues and the slots and perforations or shoulders may be formed in the band die during the cutting of the strip blank from sheet material, or any band die adapted to operate on a strip blank.

When the ends of a band are joined and the tongue 5 turned back to lock them together, the slot is not covered by the underlapped head and the aperture is, bigger the bigger the slot. To hide the aperture it is preferred to make the slot 3 by bending back a tongue 9, see Figs. 5 to '7, which afterwards is returned when the band is fitted to a container to close up the slot.

A tamper-proof form of joint may be obtained pressed plunger.

by stamping out and turning back the tongue 9 in the tail 2 of the band to form the slot in the tail, the tongue 9, as shown in Figures 5, 6 and 7 being formed so that the root is towards the body of the blank.

The construction being such that when the terminal tongue 5, which is passed through the slot 3 constituted by the gap formed at the tip of the tongue 9 in the tail 2, the tongue 5 at the head 4 is bent back on the tail of the band and then the tongue 9 in the tail pressed down, the tongue 9 in the tail 2 bites into the tongue 5 at the head 4 of the strip, as graphically illustrated in Figure 6, and it is practically impossible to disconnect the ends without breaking the tongue 5 in-the head. Further, by such arrangement, the tongue in the tail has a camming action which facilitates bringing the tongue in the head through the tail and thereby an advantage obtained over employing a tongue in thetail in a band such as is used in the usual Phoenix closure and which requires overlapping of the ends of the body of the band before the tip of the tongue can be introduced into the slot formed below a tongue formed in the tail according to the invention.

In U. S. Patent No. 1,725,602 a machine is described for locking the ends of the bands. The machine includes a rotary former having a spring pressed plunger which engages in a gap formed behind the tongue in the head of the strip.

In accordance with the present invention a strip may be perforated so as to form an engaging shoulder to enable the strip to be curled on a rotary former, e. g. as in apparatus such as described in U. S. Patent No. 1,725,602; particularly is such a device an advantage where a band with a terminal tongue as herein described is employed, because in forming the terminal 1 tongue no metal is removed and consequently no metal left which could form an engaging shoulder for the spring pressed plunger of the former.

A locking band in accordance with the present invention is preferably perforated as indicated at 10 in Figure l for engagement over the spring The perforation may be centrally disposed on the band, see Fig. 1, or eccentrically, see Fig. '7.

In some cases also instead of perforating the body of the band one side or other may be notched to form a shoulder in which the spring pressed plunger of the former will engage. Such a construction is shown in Figure 2. Alternatively, the tongue 5 may itself be perforated to form a shoulder according to the invention.

Consideration of the construction employing a terminal tongue, the head being formed with a co-operating shoulder, e. g. by perforating or notching as hereinbefore described, will show that it forms a means to greatly simplify the machine described in U. S. Patent No. 1,725,602 because there is no need to employ plunger mechanism for opening up the tongue, thereby greater advantage of design as regards the timing of the other parts of the apparatus is afforded. Such simplification is fully described in co-pending patent application Serial No. 456,612.

In the construction according to the invention a terminal tongue is preferably slightly bent up from the band as graphically shown in Figure 4, but in any case it would be noticed that the band with a terminal tongue has all the advantages as regards curling and jointing of a band with a tongue set back at an obtuse angle, and further it will be noticed that in some cases where the tongue is big enough or the spring plunger small that the portion forming the shoulder for the spring pressed plunger may be formed in the tongue itself.

By the construction herein described the hand operations 01' jointing and locking are greatly accelerated whilst the machine operations referred to are also accelerated.

What I claim is:-

1. In a tamper proof locking ring of the kind comprising a band having at one end a slotted tail and at the other end a head and a tongue in said head formed to pass through the slot in the tail and be bent on to the tail to lock the ends together, a tongue in said tail emanating from one wall of the slot to engage with the root of the tongue at the head after a locking operation.

2. In a tamper proof locking ring of the kind comprising a band having at one end a slotted tail and at the other end a head and a terminal tongue at said head formed to pass through the slot in the tail and be bent on to the tail to lock the ends together, a tongue in said tail emanating from one wall of the slot to engage with the root of the terminal tongue after a locking operation.

WILLIAM ALFRED STEPHENS. 

